Professor Kjell Aleklett has told the ABC Science Show that oil production peaked in 2008 and has been in decline since. He says that the reserves are there but the flow is lower than in the past. Professor Aleklett, who is head of the Global Energy Systems group at Uppsala University in Sweden, also says the price spike in oil in July 2008 was the trigger for the Global Financial Crisis. Click here to listen to the interview or  here to download it.

A study, led by Tad Patzek, chairman of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, says that the world will face "peak coal" as soon as 2011. (The study defines "peak coal" as the peak in the amount of energy produced globally from coal.) In contrast, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects coal consumption for electricity growing more than 50 percent by 2035 unless policies are put in place to stop the growth to prevent greenhouse gas emissions. Professor Patzek argues that the reserves estimates of the United States and other countries overstate … Continue Reading →

The German magazine Der Speigel has published part of a leaked draft German military analysis of the possible consequences of peak oil. The study was carried ou by the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank set up to fix a direction for the German military. Last week the Guardian newspaper reported that the British Department of Energy and Climate Change is also keeping documents secret which show the UK government is also far more concerned about an impending supply crisis than it publicly admits. According to the German report, there is "some probability that peak … Continue Reading →

In an interview with Time magazine, Christophe de Margerie, CEO of the French oil giant Total, has commented that "what will happen very soon is that oil supplies will not cover demand. That won’t mean there is no oil. There are oil reserves, but you will need to invest billions and billions to get it." In 2007, Mr de Margerie, told a London conference of oil executives that the industry would be unlikely to be able to produce more than 100 million barrels of oil a day and would not be able to produce the 120 million barrels a day … Continue Reading →

The Financial Times has obtained a draft of the International Energy Agency’s annual report, which states that the rate of output from the world’s biggest oil fields is declining at 9.1 per cent a year. This is the first such authoritative study of oil reserves, which most oil producing countries keep secret. The International Energy Agency, which represents the major energy consuming countries – the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea – forcasts that meeting the demand of developing countries, like China and India, will require a further investment of $360 billion a year until 2030 to develop new … Continue Reading →

Seventy percent of respondents to a survey including people from sixteen nations believe that the world’s oil supplies have already peaked. The survey, organised by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, polled 15,000 people in China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Mexico, Britain, France, Iran, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey, South Korea and the Palestinian territories. Only 22% of those surveyed believed that enough oil would be found for it to continue to be a primary source of energy. Nigeria was the only country in which a small majority (53%) believe that there would … Continue Reading →

It’s not the first time that an oil shortage has been predicted but it is the first time that such a prediction has come from the head of the world’s second largest oil company. Jeroen van der Veer, Shell’s chief executive, said in an e-mail to the company’s staff this week that demand for oil and gas would outstrip conventional supplies within seven years. “Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand” he wrote in an e-mail to staff. He forecast that, by 2015, regardless of government policy initiatives and … Continue Reading →